Courtney LaPlante Clarifies Drummer Zev Rose's Position within Spiritbox

Tomorrow is going to be a HUGE #NewMusicFriday for a number of reasons - but one in particular is Spiritbox will FINALLY release their debut album Eternal Blue upon the world (our review here).

We're excited, you're excited and the band are excited to have their highly anticipated album unleashed according to frontwoman Courtney LaPlante who joined Wall of Sound this week for a catch up in anticipation of the release. After sitting on the album for what seems like forever (due to delays and COVID) it seems the foursome are just at the point of wanting it to be ours and no longer theirs.

In saying that, you read that right, there are four members in Spiritbox - Courtney (vocals), Mike Skinner (guitar) and Bill Crook (bass) alongside drummer Zev Rose - who has been noticably absent in all of the bands promo photos and bios in the lead up to Eternal Blue's release - so much so fans questioned his involvement with the band during a recent Live Q&A conducted by LaPlante on Instagram - where she jokingly stated that every time someone asked about Zev's position in Spiritbox, his invitation to join was pushed back by a month.

During his chat with Courto, bossman Browny touched on the subject to find out why he hadn't been made an official member, despite recording drums for the album remotely and playing with the band on their ill-fated European Tour with After The Burial, Make Them Suffer and Polar, (cut-short back in March 2020 when COVID first hit) - but then again on their recently axed US tour supporting Limp Bizkit.

As it turns out, it's not as easy to get Zev in a photo as we all thought:

"I think that everyone just forgot we're in a global pandemic, and we met this guy two days before we went on our first tour with him, and we hung out with him for one week, and then we NEVER saw him again; and he lives in a different country."

https://youtu.be/xobvSmKbivY?t=685

For those not in the know, Zev resides in Philadelphia, USA while the remaning three members live in Canada, so that itself poses issues of just getting everyone together - especially when you take into consideration a pandemic shutting borders left, right and center. But they're also in different age brackets so maybe Zev doesn't want to hang out with a bunch of mid-30s losers doing old people things while he is in the prime of his youth...maybe:

"He is 12 years younger than me, and 15 years younger than Bill [Crook] so there's like a huge age gap and we wanted to take the time, and I feel like we deserve the right to take our time, to know him and I think that anyone that's creating a band, especially a band that is generating your income for you to live and support yourself should not just will-nilly let people in, you have to be a little bit defensive of that stuff."

The tone in Courtney's deliver of the above statement was full of humour (so if you're reading it with a negative thought in mind - don't) because there is nothing but love for Zev in Spiritbox. At the time of recording, the band were spending more quality time with their drummer during their various US Music Festival appearances and despite the universe trying to rip him away from them, they're all on board for #TeamZev:

"We were so excited to spend more time with him because we went on a tour that got cancelled [Limp Bizkit US Tour], so again, into the wind Zev went. But now we're together for a couple more weeks and it's been awesome and we're still keeping things to the outside right now because we're drama queens and we want to make a big deal of it, but our Zev is here to stay.

We love Zev and we would be lost without him and he has been a really big part of our lives and honestly the second that [the] second tour got cancelled, I was like ‘there’s not another man that will ever know what we’ve been through in the past two years other than this guy, other than this 20 year old guy’ [laughs]”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83lGLiodXh0

So that's the mystery solved. It all comes down to poor timing, missed opportunities and a pandemic which isn't discriminating against who it fucks up in its path. Maybe after these current shows we'll start seeing Zev Rose pop up in more promotionla photos. Until then, go show him some lovin' on his Instagram and Twitter pages!

Eternal Blue is out TOMORROW via Rise Records.
Pre-Order/Save here

Spiritbox – Eternal Blue tracklisting

1. Sun Killer
2. Hurt You
3. Yellowjacket feat. Sam Carter
4. The Summit
5. Secret Garden
6. Silk In The Strings
7. Holy Roller
8. Eternal Blue
9. We Live In A Strange World
10. Halcyon
11. Circle With Me
12. Constance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ots5los164Q